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Her name was Natsuko Okuyama, she was 61 years old and had a son.
Last Friday they identified his remains, dumped by the sea on a beach in northeast Japan a month ago.
She had been missing for ten years, ever since she was swept away by that gigantic wave of blackish waters that swept away everything that lay in front of her.
Okuyama was one of about 18,500 fatalities on the most tragic page in postwar Japanese history: the Fukushima disaster, exactly a decade ago.
March 11, 2011 has been forever etched in the Japanese psyche.
That day, the most intense earthquake in the country's history, measuring 9.1 degrees on the Richter scale, and the 15-meter tsunami that it generated off the coast of the Tohoku region, in northeastern Japan, added to the error. to create the largest nuclear accident in the world since Chernobyl in 1986, at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The lack of electrical supply triggered the meltdown of the nucleus of three of its six reactors;
a fourth was damaged by hydrogen explosions.
Ten years later, Japan has learned a series of hard lessons.
But there are still numerous and serious wounds to close, and it is uncertain that they will ever do so.
"Fukushima is marked for the rest of the history of nuclear energy," says Kiyoshi Kurokawa, director of the investigation that in 2012 concluded that the accident at Daiichi was "basically caused by humans."
10 years of Fukushima: blow to the reputation of a receding energy
Among his legacy, a polluted area that will still take decades to clean up;
a plant whose dismantling generates even more unknowns than certainties;
thousands and thousands of cubic meters of toxic waste accumulated without a definitive solution;
legal problems, and a deep distrust of the population towards what it calls “the nuclear village” (the companies and interest groups that defend atomic energy).
Almost 2,500 people are still officially missing;
As in the case of Okuyama, from time to time remains are still identified.
The fatalities are compounded by 6,000 people with serious injuries, and damages worth about 235,000 million euros, not including the clean-up of Fukushima Daiichi and its surroundings.
Half a million residents were evacuated, including 110,000 in the forced dump area 20 kilometers around the damaged nuclear power plant.
About 36,000 are still unable to return, although the actual figure may double the official figure: the vast majority of those who left have given up on returning.
State aid and compensation from the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) for the evacuees have already been used up.
"Even a decade later, the damage is still serious," summarizes in a video conference Katsunobu Sakurai, former mayor of Minamisoma, one of the cities that was partially within the mandatory evacuation radius.
"In truth, if we look for those who have managed to rebuild their lives completely, we do not find many, unfortunately," he declares.
Among evacuees, returnees or not, psychological sequelae abound, while other physical illnesses, such as hypertension or diabetes, have become more common, perhaps due to stress.
The communities have been destroyed by the diaspora of their members and, although much of the destruction of that time has been rebuilt, 2.4% of the former exclusion zone is still an "area of difficult return", due to the large presence of radioactive waste.
Suspicions persist about the healthiness of the areas that have been opening up.
A Greenpeace report denounces that 85% of the Special Decontamination Area, of 840 square kilometers and where the Government is responsible for decontamination, continues to show toxic levels of cesium.
The conservative Japanese government ensures that health risks are controlled in the areas that have been opened.
He wants to carry that message of tranquility even to the Olympic Games, which he aspires to become a showcase for the recovery of the area.
The Olympic torch will begin its journey to Tokyo later this month in Fukushima, and Fukushima City will host several of the competitions.
A committee of UN researchers this week gave a boost to the official theses: "No harmful effects on the health of the people of Fukushima have been documented that can be directly attributed to radiation exposure," it says in a report. .
Social solidarity
To encourage evacuees to return, Tokyo has invested nearly $ 27 billion in decontamination of buildings, roads and other surfaces.
The game also includes the removal of millions of square meters of the topsoil and vegetation, accumulated in mountains of black plastic bags that dot the landscapes of the area and pending a decision on how to store them in the long term.
In addition, this week the Japanese government has approved a new reconstruction plan for the next decade that will inject an additional 12.6 billion euros.
The authorities are trying to attract companies in the technology and fishing sectors, among others.
The prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has assured that the reconstruction of Tohoku "is fundamental for the revitalization of all Japan" after the triple catastrophe, and definitively promoting the recovery will be "one of the highest priorities" of his government.
The mother of all troubles is Daiichi's dismantling.
The controversial process of removing molten fuel from reactors, which has not been without setbacks, may cost close to $ 750 billion and will not be completed until 2050. At least.
Last year, the Nuclear Power Regulatory Authority (NRA) found higher-than-expected radiation levels in the provisional covers of two of the reactors.
The governor of Fukushima, Masao Uchibori, has admitted in a recent telematic press conference that "there is still no real assessment of the state of the molten fuel and debris."
Greenpeace considers the current plans "unrealistic".
The jobs face a deep distrust of the population towards the Government and TEPCO, which since the beginning of the crisis has tended to mask the bad news.
It took time to admit the fusion in the three reactors, and in 2018 it had to recognize that 70% of the stored water of the plant contained more toxic elements than it had previously declared.
Various lawsuits have been filed against TEPCO and the government, but the awards awarded have been, for the most part, small.
In the only case brought to criminal justice, a Tokyo court acquitted the three accused TEPCO officials.
The most immediate problem is, today, what to do with its contaminated water, the one used to cool the reactors and the one filtered from the subsoil despite the installation of an ice barrier.
The plant has a processing system that removes most of the dangerous radioactive elements, with the exception of tritium, an isotope of hydrogen naturally present in the environment, although in low concentrations.
Daiichi stores about 1.22 million cubic meters of processed water, very close to the limit capacity of 1.37 million, which could be exceeded in 2022.
The government advocates pouring that water into the Pacific gradually over the next few decades, although there is currently no date for that project.
The proposal has been strongly opposed by a fishing sector that is just beginning to rise up in the region, once famous for the quality of its seafood and fish.
Neighboring countries, China and South Korea, have also expressed concern about possible contamination of their fishing grounds.
The operation - assured Yumiko Hata, head of the plant in the Ministry of Industry, in a recent virtual press conference - "would conform to international safety standards and those of the International Atomic Energy Agency."
"Even if we dumped all the water at once, the impact on human health would be very small," he added.
The International Atomic Energy Agency considers, for its part, that the spill would be "technically feasible" and has offered to supervise the operation.
What the triple disaster has demonstrated beyond any doubt has been the Japanese people's capacity for social solidarity and their strength over adversity.
Ten years later, the population persists in their jobs so that their voice is heard.
And progress in Tohoku, despite everything, continues.
Security measures and controls on the nuclear sector have been intensified.
Each small step - the identification of a body, the opening of a new business in the area - represents a further advance towards normality among those affected.
One of them, Mrs. Okuyama's son, breathes easier now.
"I am very happy that my mother was found, just before the anniversary," he told the Kyodo agency.
"I will be able to release my emotions, and finally turn the page."
The displaced do not want to return
Minamisoma, of which Sakurai was mayor between 2010 and 2018, has fared relatively well.
Only part of it was left within the 20-kilometer radius of forced evacuation, and it has created a robot testing center that has attracted tech companies and created jobs.
But of the 14,000 residents who left a decade ago, fewer than 400 have returned.
Other areas have been less fortunate.
Four kilometers from the nuclear power plant, Futaba (5,700 inhabitants before the disaster) remains completely empty, inhabited only by brush and wild animals;
its original residents will not be able to return permanently until next year.
In total, the area today welcomes 5.3 million people, 6% fewer residents than a decade ago, and 10% fewer companies installed there until 2011. According to surveys, two-thirds of evacuees declare that they do not they plan to return, for fear of radiation.
Nuclear energy, the subject of a bitter debate
The nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi shut down reactors across the country fueled an existing debate over atomic energy that Japan remains unsolved.
The government of Yoshihide Suga, which last year relieved a Shinzo Abe supporter of restarting reactors, has set 2050 as the date for Japan to achieve carbon neutrality.
Meeting this goal forces, according to supporters of nuclear energy, to resort to the atom.
But in the aftermath of the disaster, the majority of the population is opposed to it.
A poll published by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper found in February that 53% of Japanese people reject it.
Only 32% declare themselves in favor.
In Fukushima, support for that energy drops to 16%.
Before 2011, two thirds of the population supported its use.
Tokyo's current plans foresee that by 2030 Japan will generate between 20 and 22% of its electricity in nuclear power plants, something that would require building new plants.
"Those who talk about atomic energy are the people in the 'nuclear village', who want to protect their vested interests," denounced last week in a telematic press conference former Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who was in charge of the country on March 11, 2011 and has since become a furious critic of nuclear power.
“They know that building new plants would be too expensive, or that there is no proper way to dispose of nuclear waste.
But there are many people who are interested, and they want it to be so ”, he added.
“Japan has many natural sources of energy, such as the sun, water, and wind.
Why should we resort to something that is less safe and more expensive? ”Asked another former prime minister and current activist against nuclear energy, Junichiro Koizumi, from the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (PLD, in government).
Until 2011, Japan had 54 reactors.
After the shutdown, the regulatory authorities have given the go-ahead for the reactivation of nine.
Only four are active, and they contribute 6% of the energy that the country consumes.
In contrast, fossil fuels represent 70%, and renewables, 23.1%.
The Japanese government plans to present its new power generation strategy for the next three years this summer.
Last year, he proposed a plan that estimates that, by 2050, the contribution of renewables will represent between 50 and 60% of the energy basket, while the rest will be covered by a combination of nuclear energy and power plants powered by fossil fuels, which will be equipped with technology to capture carbon.